You will notice at the bottom of a thread, a Quick Reply box. It's easy to drop down to that to dash off a comment. You will also note that there are no icons available. Some of the old :-) type of text comments will not transfer to a smiley....

Above and to the right of the Quick Reply box is a button that says "New Reply". Click on that to get a dialog box with all the formatting and icons...

When you "reply" to a post, it automatically takes you to the box with all those neato options. Unfortunately, this software does not have as many of the smiley we are used to....